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[zero shift]

a lotta this is known (well, not the 10% figure) but the death of Sega thing is kinda oversimplifying. still, should be an interesting book to read soon enough!

Ehhhh, the death of Sega is slightly more complicated.

It really isn't. You could say all of the things that hurt Sega such as the death of arcades, changing demographics, botched Saturn launch, etc. But all of that could be traced back to their East vs West crap. While the Saturn gets much love from hardcore gamers it clearly wasn't the right move for Sega to make. The arcades were dying everywhere but Japan and it was very clear where the market was had headed to more home focused type gameplay, 3D, and Western taste. Sega of America saw the writing on the wall perfectly. In hindsight Sega of America's choice of building strong American development teams, building a 3D console, and made sure some sort of 3D Sonic was available for the system was the right way to take. It was Sega of Japan that fucked up with focusing on 2D, arcades, and abandoned their legacy franchises.

To be fair it isn't like Sega of America doesn't have any blood on their hands as they botched the Saturn launch and had the Dreamcast unprofitable for every unit sold. But a majority of the blame lies in the jealous Sega of Japan.

 

[Tatersalad]

Sega of America boss Tom Kalinske was integral to Barbie, Flintstone vitamins, and He-Man

Never much of a Sega fan, but Flintstone vitamins are amazing so I'll give the man props.

 

[SirUltimos]

Even if Nintendo had never existed Sega wouldn't have dominated the market the way Nintendo did because the company was far too much of a mess to do it properly. The infighting between America and Japan was so toxic I'm actually shocked they were as successful as they were.

 

[Boards of Canada]

Citation needed on some of this.

 

[Noema]

Back when console wars were fought by the companies and not by their fanatics

I almost got into a fist fight in 6th grade because a kid dared to argue that the Genesis had better graphics than the SNES.

 

[clav]

If these reported statements are all true, is Nintendo's current situation a punishment for the past?

 

[MercuryLS]

Well, Nintendo co-operated with Silicon Graphics on the N64. Maybe SGI reached out to Sega USA before Nintendo, and Sega Japan told them to go away. As for PlayStation, maybe Sony reached out to Sega Japan after Nintendo rejected them, and Sega said "Nah, we're good." and kept working on Saturn.

Close, the N64 hardware was built for SoA and they tried to convince SoJ to use it for Saturn. Didn't work out and SoA said go talk to Nintendo, they ended up basing the N64 off it. Sony wanted to partner with Sega, again SoJ nixed it.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Except it's not. Nintendo had to market the NES as a toy rather than a video game console because the industry was dead. No one would sell a video game console after Atari basically cratered the industry. Nintendo had to rebuild from scratch and as I'm sure it pains many people to view it that way, those are the facts.

Nintendo rebuilt what from scratch? The popular narrative that Nintendo saved videogames is simply bullshit. Had Nintendo not created the NES then we'd be playing someone else's console. Atari turned them down when Nintendo approached them about selling the NES because they had their own console in the works. And as stated before by those who know the facts, computer gaming was alive and well, as were arcade rooms. New games were releasing on a regular basis. Consumer demand was there.
And Nintendo was sold and marketed as a videogame console, not a toy. It was never sold as a toy.

 

[Mariah Carey]

I'm kind of not liking how this book (and by extension, movie) looks like it's going to take a Nintendo-as-big-bad-bully and Sega-as-plucky-underdog direction here. Nintendo was tenacious, but that's what it took for a game system to get off the ground in the post-Atari wasteland. They're the tough little (by comparison) company that wouldn't let big comglomerates or anyone else push them around.

I don't know why "Nintendo is the bad guy" seems like it's always been such a popular narrative. They saved videogames, folks. There wouldn't be a PlayStation or an Xbox without them.

Edit:

Nintendo rebuilt what from scratch? The popular narrative that Nintendo saved videogames is simply bullshit. Had Nintendo not created the NES then we'd be playing someone else's console. Atari turned them down when Nintendo approached them about selling the NES because they had their own console in the works. And as stated before by those who know the facts, computer gaming was alive and well, as were arcade rooms. New games were releasing on a regular basis. Consumer demand was there.
And Nintendo was sold and marketed as a videogame console, not a toy. It was never sold as a toy.

Obviously there was a demand (which is why the NES took off in the first place) and I do think eventually somebody would have released another game system, but who knows when that would have been and what form it would have taken and if it would have been the right product to fulfill those demands.

It could very well have been some company that tried to push a 3DO-like device in the late 80s/early 90s, have that bomb, and have everyone conclude, "welp, guess there really isn't a market for an at-home videogame system" and who knows what would have happened afterward.

 

[shuri]

Nintendo ran stuff like gangsters back in the '80, do you guys remember the rom carts shortage? Nintendo used "roms shortage" bullshit reasons to force retailers to stock up on crap titles instead of popular titles "while waiting for more carts to be produced" Also, preferred devs would get more carts pcbs allocations leaving lesser game makers into the dust. They also had insane requirements that lead them to be investigated by the FTC

Nintendo were predators back in the '80, and that's a fact. They even tried to stop the rental of videogames..

And.. pc gaming in the '80 kinda sucked. The great games were 'deeper' in scale and whats not, but technically, they were mostly godawful due to the terrible video hardware. Gaming on pc-style supports were all on the amiga and c64. 80% of the stuff on ibm compatible PCs were AWFUL.

It only started to get REALLY awesome in the late '80

 

[Mariah Carey]

In what quantifiable way was the 80's PC gaming market niche?

Were you there in the 80s? Anyone playing a computer game (not a video game, a computer game) that wasn't Oregon Trail was a complete dork.

 

[IrishNinja]

It really isn't. You could say all of the things that hurt Sega such as the death of arcades, changing demographics, botched Saturn launch, etc. But all of that could be traced back to their East vs West crap. While the Saturn gets much love from hardcore gamers it clearly wasn't the right move for Sega to make. The arcades were dying everywhere but Japan and it was very clear where the market was had headed to more home focused type gameplay, 3D, and Western taste. Sega of America saw the writing on the wall perfectly. In hindsight Sega of America's choice of building strong American development teams, building a 3D console, and made sure some sort of 3D Sonic was available for the system was the right way to take. It was Sega of Japan that fucked up with focusing on 2D, arcades, and abandoned their legacy franchises.

To be fair it isn't like Sega of America doesn't have any blood on their hands as they botched the Saturn launch and had the Dreamcast unprofitable for every unit sold. But a majority of the blame lies in the jealous Sega of Japan.

again though: where are you citing this from? eidolon's inn, or interviews with Kalinske where he contradicts himself?

everyone wants a central thesis to work from. i think most agree SOJ bombed the Saturn out the gate by pushing it half-baked, complicated & expensive in an effort that basically handed the keys to sony, but who's call exactly that was depends on the source. I'm willing to believe SOJ pushed for new IPs and lest pandering to the west (where they prolly thought they had a foothold vs poor JP megadrive sales) but the more you get into the dreamcast the fuzzier i think it gets. it's complicated, man. saying "east vs west" doesn't nearly sum it up.

 

[whyreggielie]

Nintendo rebuilt what from scratch? The popular narrative that Nintendo saved videogames is simply bullshit. Had Nintendo not created the NES then we'd be playing someone else's console. Atari turned them down when Nintendo approached them about selling the NES because they had their own console in the works. And as stated before by those who know the facts, computer gaming was alive and well, as were arcade rooms. New games were releasing on a regular basis. Consumer demand was there.
And Nintendo was sold and marketed as a videogame console, not a toy. It was never sold as a toy.

No the NES was packaged with R.O.B specifically to make it seem like an electronic toy over a console. Nintendo reviving the video game industry in the US is not a matter of opinion, its a well known portion in the history of video games and the flat out truth is they did it by themselves. Now you can argue that we would eventually be playing video games again however Atari was surely not gonna be the one to do it with all the vaporware they were producing. One thing is for sure video games today would in some way be different if Nintendo did not step in and bring the Famicon over to the US.

 

[zero shift]

again though: where are you citing this from? eidolon's inn, or interviews with Kalinske where he contradicts himself?

everyone wants a central thesis to work from. i think most agree SOJ bombed the Saturn out the gate by pushing it half-baked, complicated & expensive in an effort that basically handed the keys to sony, but who's call exactly that was depends on the source. I'm willing to believe SOJ pushed for new IPs and lest pandering to the west (where they prolly thought they had a foothold vs poor JP megadrive sales) but the more you get into the dreamcast the fuzzier i think it gets. it's complicated, man. saying "east vs west" doesn't nearly sum it up.

I agree that it's a "depends who you talk to kind of things". That being said looking from the outside it seems that Sega of Japan did everything in its power to fuck things up for Sega of America. They were the ones who shut the American studios down, they were the ones who strongly pushed an arcade console in the mid-90s, they were the ones that weren't that interested in pursuing a 3D Sonic. I feel that actions speak louder than words.

 

[QaaQer]

The Model T Ford represents the creation and establishment of the automotive industry, with the automobile becoming a mass market consumer purchase instead of an expensive toy for the rich.

"It was just the best selling" is massively dismissive of the success it deserved, and ignprant of the reality of market conditions at the time.

If that's the simile you want to use for the NES, go for it.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. The car in-and-of-itself did not matter. It could have been any cheap car.

It was Henry Ford the man who founded the modern auto industry through the perfection of assembly line production and paying his workers a living wage that allowed them to buy luxuries and send their kids to college. which inspired/forced other manufacturers to do the same. He also hired immigrants and had free English lessons and made sure his factories were not damaging to health, e.g. having lots of natural light.

Aside from his disgusting antisemitism, he was a humanitarian.

 

[TC McQueen]

There's a book about the Wii that was translated from Japanese into English that I ordered a week or two ago. I paid for the crappiest shipping, so its taking a while to get into me, but it was recommended to me by Chris Johnson of Player One Podcast fame, so I can't go wrong.

What's the name of this book? It sounds like it might be interesting.

 

[Tripon]

What's the name of this book? It sounds like it might be interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934287229/?tag=neogaf0e-20

"Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars"

Paid $9 for a used copy. Looks like they'll selling a little bit cheaper right now. You can probably get a used copy for around $8.

 

[IrishNinja]

I agree that it's a "depends who you talk to kind of things". That being said looking from the outside it seems that Sega of Japan did everything in its power to fuck things up for Sega of America. They were the ones who shut the American studios down, they were the ones who strongly pushed an arcade console in the mid-90s, they were the ones that weren't that interested in pursuing a 3D Sonic. I feel that actions speak louder than words.

eh, overall i tend to agree - so much of the saturn was clearly centered on getting a better foothold on the homeland, as if they felt they had the west on lock (which a few years prior things did start to seem that way). past the botched dual development efforts for the DC, id say Okawa's management around that era seemed clearly more interested in working across the divide again (as Nakayama did with Kalinske) but the damage was clearly done.

 

[Phediuk]

It never ceases to amaze me how utterly terrible Nintendo is at fostering goodwill with others. They did not and still don't budge an inch for anyone but themselves.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

I love gaming history, so I'm gonna have to read this, thanks for the heads up.

 

[Quadraphonic]

It never ceases to amaze me how utterly terrible Nintendo is at fostering goodwill with others. They did not and still don't budge an inch for anyone but themselves.

What I always love is seeing Nintendo fans whitewash or defend any tarnished parts of Nintendo's history.

 

[Cheerilee]

Close, the N64 hardware was built for SoA and they tried to convince SoJ to use it for Saturn. Didn't work out and SoA said go talk to Nintendo, they ended up basing the N64 off it. Sony wanted to partner with Sega, again SoJ nixed it.

Yep.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/sega-and-sony-almost-teamed-up-on-a-console

"Sony came to us after they had been rebuffed by Nintendo," Kalinske recalled. “They had wanted Nintendo to use some technology that they had, and Nintendo instead chose to work with Philips. That really annoyed Sony. Olaf Olafsson [Sony Electronic Publishing President] and Micky Schulhof [President of Sony America] came to my office and said, 'Tom, we really don’t like Nintendo. You don’t like Nintendo. We have this little studio down in Santa Monica [Imagesoft] working on video games, we don’t know what to do with it, we’d like Sega’s help in training our guys. And we think the optical disc will be the best format.'"

"Sega of America and Sony were both convinced that the next platform had to use optical discs. We had been working on this CD-ROM attachment to the Genesis, which we knew really wasn’t adequate, but it taught us how to make games on this format," said Kalinske. "We had the Sony guys and our engineers in the United States come up with specs for what this next optical-based hardware system would be. And with these specs, Olafsson, Schulhof and I went to Japan, and we met with Sony’s Ken Kutaragi. He said it was a great idea, and as we all lose money on hardware, let's jointly market a single system – the Sega/Sony hardware system – and whatever loss we make, we split that loss."

"Next, we went to [Sega president] Nakayama and the Board at Sega, and they basically turned me down. They said, 'that’s a stupid idea, Sony doesn’t know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this?' That is what caused the division between Sega and Sony and caused Sony to become our competitor and launch its own hardware platform."

http://www.sega-16.com/2006/07/interview-tom-kalinske/

I remember Joe Miller and I were talking about this, and we had been contacted by Jim Clark, the founder of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), who called us up one day and said that he had just bought a company called MIPS Inc. which had been working on some things with some great R&D people, and it just so happened that they came up with a chip that they thought would be great for a video game console. We told them that in the U.S., we don’t really design consoles; we do the software, but it sounded interesting and we would come over and take a look at it. We were quite impressed, and we called up Japan and told them to send over the hardware team because these guys really had something cool. So the team arrived, and the senior VP of hardware design arrived, and when they reviewed what SGI had developed, they gave no reaction whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, they basically said that it was kind of interesting, but the chip was too big (in manufacturing terms), the throw-off rate would be too high, and they had lots of little technical things that they didn’t like: the audio wasn’t good enough; the frame rate wasn’t quite good enough, as well as some other issues.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I’m not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn’t good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren’t the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I figure this is the best thread to bump with this, but yeah. I got this book. I'm like 50 pages in. It is fantastic. It's pricey, but I recommend it to everyone here.